


save that light

by CloudCover (RainyForecast)



Series: Hockey RPF Tumblr Prompts [4]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Curses, Demons, M/M, The Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 03:22:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10688748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainyForecast/pseuds/CloudCover
Summary: “Like in TV show with Sam and Dean and car?” Geno asks, and Mario puts his head in his hands.Tumblr prompt:stumblingoverchaos asked:Consider this - maybe the injury and illness curse isn't the curse of Consol/PPG. Maybe it all started with Mario (cancer, debilitating back problems, heart problems). What do Sid and Geno do when they start to look away from the present to the past?





	save that light

“I’m sorry,  what?” 

Sid stares at Mario, wondering if 1. Mario’s lost his mind, or 2. If Sid’s lost his. Sid looks over at Geno, mostly to check if he heard the same thing Sid just heard. Geno’s eyebrows are trying to meet his hairline so there’s a good possibility. 

“Like in TV show with Sam and Dean and car?” Geno asks, and Mario puts his head in his hands.

 

***

  
Sid doesn’t know quite what he was expecting a crossroads demon to look like, but it sure wasn’t this. But it makes sense, somehow, for a quiet street corner in Sewickley to be haunted? Possessed? By a demon with a conservative 1960s beehive and a pastel skirt suit that looks like something Jackie Kennedy would have worn.  She’s checking her manicured nails with the air of someone who has all the time in the world but doesn’t necessarily feel like spending it on _them_. 

“Um, so, I’m Sidney Crosby? And this—”

“I know who you are, “ she says, finally looking up at Sid and Geno. Her eyes are cold. “And I know why you’re here.”

“Ok, well, in that case. What can we do to lift the curse?” Sid asks her. Her eyes narrow. 

“Mario knew the stakes when he made a deal with me. And I’ve kept up my end of things. He won two Cups, survived cancer, and saved the franchise. And now you have two Cups as well. It’s not my fault you’ve decided you can’t deal with the fallout.” 

“Fallout?” Sid says, and he feels anger rise up in his throat, hot and bitter. “Fallout?” He thinks of Tanger, out for the season and sad behind the eyes. Of Hagelin, of Murr, of all the others out injured. He thinks of his own past injuries. Months spent dizzy and puking with post-concussion syndrome. He can’t trust himself to say anything more. Luckily, Geno speaks for him.

“Deal always have cost?” Geno says, mildly, as if he isn’t affected at all. Where he’s getting the presence of mind, Sid has no idea. 

“Of course,” the demon says. “If they didn’t, every human on earth would be crawling all over us and we’d never get any peace.”

“Deal paid for by now, right?” Geno continues, in the same mild tone. “How to finish? Break?”

The demon’s eyes narrow even further. “You don’t beak deals with things like me.”

Geno’s expression goes dark. “Sid’s concussion, your fault?” he grinds out, and his voice crackles with ice. “Might happen again?” 

She sneers at him. “Not directly my fault. The deal was for success. Not my fault the luck’s a little…dangerous. Things have a cost.” 

“How,” Geno spits out. “How to break?” The demon considers him, for a long moment. And then smiles. It makes Sid’s skin crawl.

“Sacrifice,” she says. “ _Great_ sacrifice. What would you be willing to give, Evgeni Vladimirovich Malkin? For the health and wellbeing of your team?” Her oily gaze slides over to rest on Sid. “For your…captain. It’ll have to be something interesting. I’ve no use for the kind of trivial things you mortals usually treasure. I don’t want your money, for example. It has to be something truly precious. What is it you love most in life, Evgeni Vladimirovich Malkin?”  She paces forward, into Geno’s space, but he doesn’t move. Sid lurches forward to, he doesn’t know quite what. Protect Geno? But Geno throws a hand back and shoves at Sid’s chest, warning him off. “Is is hockey, Evgeni?” the demon continues, staring at Geno like she’s seeing into his soul. She probably is. “Is it your country? Your family? Or no, is it having one of your own someday? Or— “ She pauses, eyes widening like she’s just seen something fascinating in Geno’s face. And then she starts to laugh. 

Sid tries to move forward again but she flicks a finger at him and he suddenly can’t lift his feet. Geno whips around and his eyes are crazed.

“Don’t you fucking touch him, you fucking-” Sid is shocked to realize that Geno’s shouting in Russian, and that Sid can understand him. 

“Ahhh,” the demon purrs. “There it is.” Geno looks at her blankly, chest heaving. She continues. “That’s what you love most. Your captain. _Your Sid_. Oh, it’s too good!” And she laughs again, and it’s the worst noise Sid’s ever heard. Her face doesn’t look like a perfectly made up housewife’s anymore, it’s melting, warping.  “Pining, for years, oh, you stupid creature! How wonderful! That’s what I’ll take from you! But should it only be your love for him, or maybe _every memory you have of his very existence_?” 

Sid’s heart feels like it’s going to slam its way through his ribcage. Geno loves him. Geno loves him back. Sid hasn’t been the only one, all this time—   
He lurches forward, one foot tearing free of whatever hold the demon has on it. The demon has Geno by the shoulders, is pushing him down onto his knees, one suddenly too thin, too gnarled hand pulling on his hair so his head is yanked back and his neck is laid bare and exposed. Sid sees it tremble as Geno swallows, distantly notes Geno has tears running down his face but that he’s looking at the demon with a face set like stone. He’s about to—

Sid feels something build in his core, something hot, and burning, and it feels like the place where he gets the strength to keep going in the last seconds of a playoff game, when the very air he gasps into his lungs feels like acid. The feeling builds, and builds, and floods him, and suddenly a thought surfaces. 

He could step forward. 

He could. It would be easy. And so he does. He steps forward towards Geno, and something like a shockwave rolls off of Sid, making the air shimmer and roar in his ears. 

The demon is gaping at him, horrified, clawlike fingers still clutching Geno’s hair. Geno’s limp in her grasp. Sid isn’t sure if he’s unconscious, but he feels a dark certainty that if it’s anything worse than that, he’s going to obliterate her. He steps forward again, and it feels like his steps anchor him in the earth beneath his feet. There’s a humming in the air, all around him, and part of him somehow knows it’s life, the life of Geno and of the people in the houses around them and the trees and the animals and the birds high overhead. Sid can feel all of it, an expanse like a web of light. 

When he speaks to her, his own voice is terrible and alien in his ears.   
“Let him go. If you do anything to him, I’m going to end you. There won’t be anything left.”

She lets Geno fall, and she cowers and gibbers, clawed hands clutching at the air in supplication.

“No one told me, no one told me that you were nephilim,” she keens. “Please, please— I beg you—”

Sid could kill her, he realizes, with a kind of wonder. Just like before, when he knew he could break her hold and step forward. This too, would be so easy. And knowing that doesn’t make him feel like doing it. He can see her, well, not life force exactly, but he can see whatever she’s made of, twisted, and shriveling. He feels a distant sort of pity. 

“You’re finished,” he tells her. “Any curse, or deal, or sway you ever held over me or mine. It’s done with.” 

“Yes, yes, I swear it!” she wails. 

“Alright,” Sid answers, and the ground around them shakes. “Then, go. And you aren’t ever coming back.” 

With a final shriek she fades from view. For couple of heartbeats longer, Sid can still feel the thrum of life around him, can feel Geno’s heartbeat pulse through Sid’s body, resonate inside his bones. 

And then, like night falling in the space of a breath, everything goes dark. 

 

***

 

When Sid swims back to consciousness, Geno’s kneeling over him, frantic, tear tracks still staining his cheeks. 

“G,” Sid says, and can’t think of what else to say. Geno loves him, the demon was going to take it away from him, and then— 

Sid feels like something important happened. He instinctively knows the deal has been destroyed, that the demon is gone. But the details dissipate like mist when he tries to remember how, exactly, it came to pass. He groans, and pulls himself to a sitting position. He feels like he’s just been through the worst bag skate of his life. Geno’s hands dart over him in concern, checking him for injury. Sid catches them between his own, brings them to his mouth, kisses them. 

“Me too,” he tells Geno. “Me too.” Geno makes a broken kind of sound and pulls Sid to him, burying his face in Sid’s hair, clutching at him like he never wants to let go. Sid sighs, and lets himself collapse into Geno. Geno’s heart pounds under Sid’s ear, and for a moment, he thinks he remembers— but then, the faint sense memory evaporates. 

“I love you too, G,” Sid clarifies, just to make sure he knows. Geno grips him tighter in response, presses hard kisses into his hair and along his temple. Sid sighs at the touch, and raises a hand to cup Geno’s jaw. “Let’s go home, okay?” Geno nods, eyes soft, and happy. And they go.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a Tumblr prompt fill and is un-beta'd. 
> 
> Title is from Imagine Dragons' "Demons." I can't stop the song lyric titles, I'm unoriginal and it's become A Thing at this point. 
> 
>  
> 
> You can find me as [creaturesofnarrative ](http://creaturesofnarrative.tumblr.com/) (main) and [knifeshoeoreofight](http://knifeshoeoreofight.tumblr.com/) (hockey sideblog) on Tumblr, and as RainyForecast on Twitter. Come say hi and cry with me about how hockey both real and fictional has eaten our lives.


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